Tag Archives: Prayer

My son stomps around the second floor to ready for work while my husband sits quietly with his morning paper at the kitchen counter. Meanwhile, I write away the hour, sitting near a window, in my lovely new PJ’s, robe and slippers my sister and aunt brought yesterday.

But it won’t be long before I head to Kara’s to finish up that last bit of painting — so that she and her husband can have their ‘home sweet home’ all to themselves — until the baby arrives anyway.

It’s been a year defined by sharing my Purdy paintbrushes with others — six months at Sis’s followed by a month now at Kara’s. My painting skills may be overrated but my price is right — it’s hard to beat free. But next week I’ll use them at home, to paint my dining room for the Nth time — at the risk of husband-teasing that I’m reducing our square footage with every stroke.

If one is inclined toward accounting, this dining room rendezvous with a paintbrush will make four times in four and a half years — if one doesn’t consider the six coats of my last go-around, in that all-out effort to get my white ‘just right.’

I have a hankering for a cinnamon-tinted dining room. Or cumin-colored perhaps. Something warm and brown for winter — yet dark and cool for summer. And then there is this: I always pray best with a paintbrush in my hand. And there’s much to pray for these days — the new baby that’s coming — Kyle’s new book on the eve of being published — my mother-in-law who’s trying a different cocktail of chemotherapy — my sister-in-law now back in AA who’s asked for prayers — my brother who will soon be marrying a woman with the same first and middle name as Mom — and the scary news for one diagnosed yesterday with breast cancer.

I fear my praying is no better than my painting: I fear it too is overrated. I do not have a hot-line to God. No more than anyone else. But when I’m asked, I do my best. Sometimes I’m bold in my petitions — specific at laying out to God exactly what my wishes and hopes are in a particular matter. But most of the time I just think the person’s name and imagine their face in my mind and let God fill in the blanks with my love and His. Where a word is involved my favorite is ‘peace’ — I pray sweet, blessed peace and good sleep so that fears and worries don’t pick people apart to make them less than who they are.

And this is, at heart, what prayer is for me: Prayer is less about hopes and wishes and dreams — and more about being who we are. So my favorite definition of prayer is this by Thomas N. Hart, which I stumbled upon in his book, The Art of Christian Listening: “Prayer is being yourself before God.”

In a year where I’ve been so preoccupied with understanding what it means to be true self, this definition of prayer becomes poignant. How appropriate that answers came this week while painting — with a stroke of a brush as I gazed beyond the light dividers of the window to the naked shivering trees — that being true self has less to do with occupation and more to do with love — stark naked love.

When I paint for love alone, I am my true self and I am in prayer. When I garden for self or others out of love (rather than obligation), I am my true self AND I am in prayer. No matter what I am doing — whether cooking or housekeeping or writing — if out of love, I am in communion with God and, therefore, in prayer.

There is much need for prayer. There is much need for us to be our true and simple selves — to express our love into the world however and whenever and wherever we can — even clumsily and even with over-rated skills. Because love and our need for it cannot be overrated.

Granny’s dressing sits on the kitchen counter ready to pop into the oven while a double batch of her egg noodles sit tight in the freezer.

With such a busy week, I give thanks they are ready to cook, even THOUGH it took til yesterday afternoon to come together. With only a corn casserole still to mix, I’ll soon be traveling east, carrying my trinity of gifts for today’s Thanksgiving table.

My sister Christi is hosting at her renovated farmhouse — the one that sits on Granny and Granddad’s homestead. I asked if she’d like to a few months back — I wasn’t surprise she said yes. Christi is so darn proud of her home. And it gives her joy to share it with others. And isn’t this how it should always and everywhere be? Not just with our gifts — like with our particular knack for making certain foods just right — but with our homes and most of all ourselves?

As I gather with a litany of family: my husband and two of my children — Kyle and Kate — Kate’s husband, my grandchildren, sister, sister-in-law, nieces and aunt and uncle, I think of other Thanksgiving tables and the faces gathered there. My daughter Kara will sit at a table filled with in-laws while son Bryan is celebrating for the first-time with future in-laws at a borrowed table in Eureka Springs. And what do you know, but that this year my amazing brother Jon is in Dallas, dining with a new girlfriend and her family.

Then I think of family further afield — like Aunt Carol, hosting her children and many grandchildren at her Utah home. And my new found second cousins even further east: in Vermont — John, George and Olga — in New York — Judy, Rainey and Helen — and in Florida — Butch.

I pray blessings on all these many tables. But especially those trying to fill the gap of lost love and Thanksgiving table gifts. As I write, my love embraces Aunt Jo’s family, who somewhere a little further east of Sis’s house, will be gathering for the first time without Aunt Jo and her lovely pecan and pumpkin pies and her own particular version of Granny’s dressing and noodles.

And how can I not think of family even further afield, the love I no longer see but in some mysterious way, carry alive within me? Mom, Dad, Papa, Uncle Sonny, Aunt Jo, Granny and Granddad — even now, I sense all is well with you — and until I gather with you, I’ll do my best to carry your love forward.

With a beautiful candle lit, a cup of coffee nearby and three snoozing canines around me and my favorite chair, I picked up pencil and journal to write. These days my journal is filled with short stories of ancestors — some told me by aunts and uncles, while others come from reading old newspaper articles. At yesterday’s funeral, I invited my mother’s oldest brother to recount tales of his youth and memories of his grandparents; he seemed glad to share that which he could still recall. Uncle Bob’s stories now fill two pages of my journal.

Having lunch with Aunt Jo — whose funeral we gathered at yesterday — has been hovering at the top of my list since Daddy died. Just three weeks ago I told her, “I want to get together for lunch with you real soon.” Unfortunately, I didn’t make it happen; and now the opportunity is gone. But I’m grateful for the scraps of stories she spoke of Sunday evening, and those, of course, take up a page and a half of my journal.

All this gathering of family history has me realizing — family is more than sharing common bloodlines. Two weeks ago, I picked up the phone to talk to a second cousin who I didn’t know existed until running across him in research. My Greek grandfather’s younger sister, Anna — who died three days after my father was born — left three children. Neither my father nor grandfather ever mentioned them — but it certainly helps explain those trips my young parents took to Vermont, during their early days of marriage.

Amazingly, all three second cousins — born in the mid-1920s — are still alive. I called the youngest one, John, who is now 85. Once John recovered from his surprise, he invited me to send up a copy of my research, with a promise to answer whatever questions he could. I’m still working on the package I promised to send him — hopefully, it will be gone by week’s end.

After finishing today’s morning pages, I made a slice of toast. The smell of toast always reminds me of grandparents — either my Greek grandfather or my maternal grandmother. Today it was both.

As far as I know, Granny always had a piece of toast covered with jelly for breakfast. ‘Toast and Jell,” she called it. As a young school girl, it was what I often had myself — not because it was my favorite — but because it’s what my Greek grandfather could make me in a hurry before school. The toast was always burnt around the edges but generous with butter. Real butter not margarine — so the bread was always a little smushed from Papa’s effort to spread cold butter over it. Papa always served it to me with a cup of strong black coffee. Greek-style, I suppose.

I don’t know if my new-found cousins from Vermont grew up with toast for breakfast or not. And if they did, whether it was burnt around the edges or covered with jelly. And it’s not important for me to know — it certainly won’t make my list of questions that my second cousin John so graciously offered to answer. But possessing these unimportant facts is something one just owns about family. And this morning, when my teeth crunched into a bit of crispy slightly black around the edges toast, slathered with soft yogurt margarine but no jell, I remembered my grandparents. And gave thanks.